This Week in the Laboratories Of Democracy

Herewith, our regular survey of what's going on in state governments, because that is where the best governing is done, and that is where all government power should reside. Clearly.

We begin in Texas, where women are being coaxed — nay, positively encouraged — to bleed and die by the side of the road, because Rick Perry's delicate Christian conscience demands it:

Wayne Christian, a Republican state representative said, "I don't think anybody is against providing health care for women. What we're opposed to are abortions." He added, "Planned Parenthood is the main organization that does abortions. So we kind of blend being anti-abortion with being anti-Planned Parenthood."

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Being the mean, uncaring bastards that we are.

(This is a good time to mention this study from the Guttmacher Institute about what state legislatures were up to regarding reproductive rights in 2011. There were 1,150 provisions limiting a woman's right to choose proposed last year; there were over 2000 introduced over the previous two years. This is important to remember because it proves that the Tea Party people, and those politicians the Tea Party people helped to elect, are not at all interested in the divisive social issues and are solely concerned about The Deficit.)

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Swinging north, we arrive in Wisconsin, where the legislature is engaged in an effort to see that murdering democracy will have to be decriminalized, unless, of course, some of its DNA on the perp.

Vos, the amendment's sponsor, argued that the recall process was broken...

Yeah, it works too well. Must be broken.

Off, then, to the great southwest, where doctors now are one-step closer to having a religious-conscience exemption that is based on breaking the Eighth Commandment:

Republican state Sen. Nancy Barto introduced the measure to protect doctors from so-called "wrongful birth" lawsuits. Such lawsuits are sometimes filed by parents of children with disabilities who believe that doctors withheld information that could have led to the decision to have an abortion.

Because decisions are things we don't want parents making.

And let's conclude our brief tour in Utah, Land Of Romney, where the state senate was the scene of a great triumph for abject ignorance, and not merely because of the substance of the no-talky-sexytime bill, but also of the calm and reasoned way its proponents presented their case.

The bill was presented by Senate sponsor Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, who did not yield to questions from her colleagues, saying "everyone knows where they are, I don't know that it's going to be beneficial for me to debate."